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March 14, 2003
Media under the microscope
Local newspaper defends its editorial position on Letters page
content.
JAMIE BONHAM SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
The Letters page of the Jewish Western Bulletin is one of
the "holiest pages" in the paper, according to one of
the Bulletin's owners, because it is the one part of the
paper that is completely owned by the public. That sentiment came
out of a discussion about letters to the editor that formed part
of a Philosophers' Café this past Saturday. It was the last
Jewish community Philosophers' Café of the season at the
Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver and it covered the
topic The Voice of Communal Concerns: Challenges and Responsibilities
of the Jewish Press.
The evening was an opportunity for the community to tell the owners
and editor of the Bulletin what they believed the role of
the Jewish press should be in Vancouver and whether the Bulletin
has met those expectations.
The topics discussed ranged from the day-to-day realities of running
a newspaper to the larger questions of what issues should be covered
and what opinions should be expressed. Present for the discussion
were publisher and co-owner Cynthia Ramsay, reporter and co-owner
Kyle Berger and editor Baila Lazarus. Rabbi Yosef Wosk facilitated
the evening, encouraging the attendees to engage the Bulletin
staff in an honest dialogue about what the Bulletin means
to them.
The focus of much of the discussion was the section of the paper
dedicated to letters from the community. Berger noted that the letters
page was one of the "holiest pages" in the paper. He encouraged
readers to write to the editor more often and share their opinions
in the communal forum of the Letters page, even if those opinions
attack the paper.
"We aren't afraid to publish something that is negative, that
criticizes us," said Berger.
A common concern that was voiced throughout the evening was the
amount of space in the Letters page given to people espousing views
that contained anti-Israel biases. Several attendees suggested that
the Bulletin was too lenient in allowing these sentiments
to be aired in a Jewish newspaper. Lazarus defended the publishing
of such letters by arguing that in order for real debate on the
issues to progress, Jews in particular need to know what is being
said about Israel. The Jewish community needs to see the arguments
being raised against Israel, as well as who is raising them, in
order to effectively refute them, she said.
"We do have a policy where we really try to put in all the
letters that come to us," said Lazarus. "Once you start
deciding about one letter over the other, you begin to stick a big
editorial foot on your Letters page.... We as Jews don't look for
those articles that criticize Israel. If you don't know that these
are the arguments being used against Israel, you will never be able
to influence those who [harbor] views against Israel."
"It keeps us honest, I think, because sometimes we might go
into an event and we may or may not bring our biases into it,"
added Ramsay. "I'd rather know what people are saying about
us, and what their arguments are and who they are."
In light of the older readership of the Bulletin, the speakers
were asked what they were doing to engage the youth of the community
in the paper. According to Berger, the difficulty of appealing to
the youth of the community is reflective of the general problem
of enticing youth to become involved with the Jewish community.
"It's difficult with young people," he said. "The
first step is to get them to care about the community before we
can get them to care about reading the Bulletin. That's the
order that things fall into."
"Part of the challenge of that is that we want to encourage
young people without alienating the people who are actually subscribing,
which is the older generation. It's a tough balancing act,"
explained Ramsay.
Other Jewish newspapers with much larger markets and thus much larger
budgets are able to provide coverage of non-Jewish events such as
music and the arts, in order to attract an audience of youth and
unaffiliated Jews, Lazarus said. According to Ramsay, the Bulletin
is hindered in this respect due to the lack of funds.
"We are a privately owned business, which I think a lot of
people don't understand. The size of the paper is completely dependent
on the amount of advertising we get," said Ramsay. She said
that they would like to act on ideas such as crossword puzzles or
entertainment listings of non-Jewish events,
but that more financial support was needed.
It was noted that most Jewish newspapers in other communities were
partly or wholly dependent on Federation funds, as opposed to the
independently owned Bulletin. The downside of being tied
to Federation funds, according to Lazarus, was that your editorial
choices would often be made for you due to the sensitivities of
the organization. If the Bulletin were not a privately owned
paper, readers wouldn't get to see the same range of topics that
are currently covered in the paper, she said.
Several people complimented the Bulletin staff on the recent
editorial encouraging Jews to take their support of Israel to the
streets. A few of the attendees said that they felt the paper was
not strident enough in its defence of Israel and that the editorial
was a welcome change. However, some speakers stated that they appreciated
the fact that the Bulletin was a community paper and were
happy to have less coverage of Israel in favor of more support of
the local community.
In her opening statements, Lazarus described the difficulty of meeting
the needs of the entire community in such a small paper while still
keeping the paper interesting. Not everything can fit in the paper
and sometimes there are hard decisions to make about what makes
it into the paper and what doesn't, she said.
"My biggest challenge, as the editor, is to make this paper
the best quality newspaper I can make it," said Lazarus. "And
how do I do it in such a way that we maintain our identity as a
Jewish paper and as a community paper? In any ethnic paper, the
responsibility is trying to reflect the community that it serves.
For us it is reflecting the diversity, the challenges, the goals
and the hopes of every person in the Jewish community."
Jamie Bonham is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.
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